Enron

One of the most infamous scandals in financial history became a theatrical epic in 'Enron', a dazzling exposition of the shadowy mechanisms of economic deceit, first performed at Chichester's Minerva Theatre in 2009. At once a case study and an allegory with continuing importance, the play charts the notorious rise and fall of the company Enron and its founding partners Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Market strategies based on engineering ever-rising stock prices, rather than actual profits, turned the company into an empty shell, a virtual organism balanced on a pin-point of market confidence. Mixing classical tragedy with savage comedy and surreal metaphor, 'Enron follows a group of flawed men and women in a narrative of greed and loss which reviews the tumultuous 1990s, and the financial chaos which has spilled over into the new century.